Week 12: Groups Get Vocal as Obama Prepares to Address Congress

WASHINGTON -- As they gear up for a pivotal week in the healthcare reform debate -- with the President addressing Congress on Wednesday -- various interest groups are letting the President know their conditions for supporting the effort.

Congress returns from a month-long recess on Tuesday, and Obama will address both chambers the following evening.

During his prime time address, Obama is expected to lay out more specifics of his healthcare plan. But it's unclear whether he'll go back to pushing for a public health insurance option as part of reform.

Republicans and conservative Democrats say they won't vote for a plan that has one, while liberals say they won't back a plan that doesn't.

Although a public plan was originally a key part of his agenda, the President has backed away from his original insistence on a government-run option, saying it's not necessarily crucial to the deal.

Meanwhile, Republicans remain opposed to the public option, but conservatives still haven't come forward to say whether they'll support a reform bill that doesn't have one.

Aiming for a compromise, some members of Congress have put their weight behind a state-by-state cooperative plan, which would set up insurance co-ops in each state without creating a new national insurance program.

But the Progressive Caucus, an 80-plus member group of liberal House Democrats, sent a letter to Obama this week asking for a meeting to discuss "retaining a robust public option in any final health reform bill."

The group said it will not support a "weakened" bill that doesn't contain a public option.

"Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates -- not negotiated rates -- is unacceptable," the group said in its letter, signed Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz), co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus.

The group added that paying physicians and hospitals at Medicare-like rates under the public plan would save $75 billion, but allowing providers to negotiate rates with the government would erase any of those savings.

That position is markedly at odds with House Democrats on the other end of the spectrum. The 51-member conservative Democratic House Blue Dogs group said it would support a government-run insurance option only if it set reimbursement rates in the same manner as private plans -- through negotiations with providers.

Meanwhile, the so-called "Gang of Six" Senators on the upper chamber's Finance Committee -- which has yet to introduce a bill -- will meet Tuesday to continue talks. The three Democrats and three Republicans have been meeting privately for months in an effort to hammer out a bi-partisan agreement.

Neither the Senate nor the House has scheduled any floor action for the upcoming week.

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